Review-o-Matic
There's a funny piece by John Bloom in the National Review, on the perils of reading (and writing) book reviews. Reminded me a bit of an old parody in the National Lampoon or Rolling Stone, the Review-o-Matic where, among other things, you could pick out your adjectives for describing guitar solos -- "crunchy," "sludgy" "sledgehammer," etc.
http://www.nationalreview.com:80/comment/comment-bloom052102.asp
And in an only tangentially related story, today's Guardian presents an expose of Oxbridge essay mills, where you pay between 80 and 20,000 quid for essays written to order by students and grads from Oxford and Cambridge. The pay scale goes up, depending on your own expertise and how fast you can turn around the assignment -- overnight can net you as much as 600 quid (that's more than a thousand bucks).
http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,2048465,00.html
I may have missed my calling -- I used to do this at college, though as an independent contractor. I'd write papers on Dune, or Frankenstein, or The Lord of the Rings -- for some reason, students taking a class in Science Fiction and Fantasy had a hard time getting a handle on the material, or maybe they were just too stoned (it was the 1970s) to focus on the homework. I charged a buck a page, a six-pack of Budweiser, and a carton of cigarettes per term paper. I was a lousy typist (the beer didn't help) so it was time-intensive work and I eventually gave it up for more lucrative employment, making pizzas at a seedy joint in Queenstown, Maryland.
http://www.nationalreview.com:80/comment/comment-bloom052102.asp
And in an only tangentially related story, today's Guardian presents an expose of Oxbridge essay mills, where you pay between 80 and 20,000 quid for essays written to order by students and grads from Oxford and Cambridge. The pay scale goes up, depending on your own expertise and how fast you can turn around the assignment -- overnight can net you as much as 600 quid (that's more than a thousand bucks).
http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,2048465,00.html
I may have missed my calling -- I used to do this at college, though as an independent contractor. I'd write papers on Dune, or Frankenstein, or The Lord of the Rings -- for some reason, students taking a class in Science Fiction and Fantasy had a hard time getting a handle on the material, or maybe they were just too stoned (it was the 1970s) to focus on the homework. I charged a buck a page, a six-pack of Budweiser, and a carton of cigarettes per term paper. I was a lousy typist (the beer didn't help) so it was time-intensive work and I eventually gave it up for more lucrative employment, making pizzas at a seedy joint in Queenstown, Maryland.